"The Onion"'s A.V. Club Madison website to shut down

Madison arts and entertainment news on The Onion's A.V. Club Madison website will end on June 15.

On Friday, in an email obtained by Isthmus, Madison city editor Ben Munson told his contributors that this local portion of the satiric newspaper's A.V. Club coverage will close.

"I want to stress that this decision is strictly financial and in no way reflects the incredible work we've all done," he wrote.

Munson declines to comment, as does The Onion's national general manager and founding editor, Scott Dikkers.

The Onion launched in Madison in 1988.

"It's a shame that The Onion and the A.V. Club are no longer going to have anyone on the ground in the city where they started," says Andrew Winistorfer, one of the Madison edition's writers.

A.V. Club general manager Josh Modell says that, while the A.V. Club website will close down, some local A.V. Club content will remain in the print product.

On May 9, Denver's Reverb similarly reported that its city's own A.V. Club section would soon end. Denver editor Cory Casciato said, "The reason why, as far as I understand, is it's just a cost-cutting measure. It had nothing to do with quality."

The Milwaukee edition of The Onion has its own local A.V. Club section, as do Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Toronto.

In 2001 The Onion's comedy-fiction offices were moved to New York City. The fact-based A.V. Club headquarters are in Chicago, where the newspaper is consolidating all of its national operations.

[Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect newly available information about the status of the A.V. Club Madison in print.]